Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 151630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 758(@200wpm)___ 607(@250wpm)___ 505(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 151630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 758(@200wpm)___ 607(@250wpm)___ 505(@300wpm)
“Chosen a side,” Dev says grimly.
Arawn nods. “Grayson Sloane is obviously playing a game of chess, putting all the pieces in place. It is not time to kill the wizard. He is too powerful for even you. For you alone, but you will not be for long. Even today Myrddin set another on her path, and long ago he did the same for the third. The men are necessary as both power and obfuscation, if Grayson is doing what I think he is. This will always be a war won by women, un sanctaidd.”
“Why do you call me that and why am I here if I cannot save them today? I don’t…I don’t know what I’ll do without him.” It is so odd since I started this whole thing certain I would walk away from him, and now I can’t imagine it. Can’t imagine my life, my heart, going on without him.
Panic threatens to overwhelm me.
“Calm,” Arawn says in a gentle but firm tone. “Find your calm. All will be well if you will it. You cannot kill him but you can defeat him, and you won’t do it with violence. You will do it the way you were created to do it. You will offer those he would harm choice and light and a chance to start again. Like you offered Devinshea, though it is not yet his time.”
“How?” I ask because I still don’t understand why I’m sacred.
“What do you mean by it’s not my time?” Dev asks.
The King of the Dead gives him a mysterious smile. “My cauldron gives opportunities. She allows for change, for rebirth, and she can allow those who have made mistakes to make retribution if they choose. I see the way every creature could die. See the most likely way each will die. I do not see this death for you, Devinshea. I see a long life with your family, and oddly a gentle fading, your children by your side, when they are gone.”
“I won’t outlive them,” Dev says. “We all know that despite taking Daniel’s blood I am mortal and will die.”
“And yet that is not what I see for you, High Priest,” Arawn says gently. “There is a way, but I cannot influence it. It is up to him. If he truly sees what Shahidi can do, what she is made of, it could sway him.”
“Who?” Dev asks.
“Have faith and all will be well,” Arawn promises before turning to me. “You wish to know what you are? Like I said I was granted permission to create you, but you stand before me magnificent on your own. Shy, I created you and I was forced to destroy you when I knew I could no longer keep my corporeal form. It was that or hide you in Annwn forever, and you were meant to be in the world. You were a gift for the living creatures of all the planes.”
The truth hits me. I suppose somewhere I have always known. I knew it when I felt the deep connection to earth and sky. When I first felt a creature pass and wished it well on its journey. I thought those moments the fanciful ideas of a creative child, but I was closer to the truth then. When I was a child, my mind wasn’t muddled with the problems of living. I simply was and knew the dying rabbit or butterfly could use my kindness.
And so I turned the wheel and released them.
My mind flies back. Through the ages, because I was not human until I took this form.
I bubble and boil. I feed the armies of the Earth plane. I offer rebirth to those who choose me, passage to those ready to be something else.
I am life and death and eternity in the form of a cauldron. While I appear to be cast of iron, the truth is something more. I am energy. I am rest. I am the end and beginning of the experience of life.
And then I am small. I am dismantled because I am dangerous. I am flung to a new land where Arawn believes I will be safely hidden for all of time.
I want more.
I want to know why they wish for the wheel to turn. Why they make the choices they make.
I want to know what I am truly made of, to understand the world in a way I cannot in this form.
So I turn my wheel. I become a mote of dust, a blade of grass on the savannah, a drop of needed rain. I become the smallest of creatures, bacteria replicating, and then an ant with mighty strength. A bird on the wind and mouse skittering around. A beloved cat and fierce lion, and then I find my way into my mother’s womb and after centuries and centuries, I am Shahidi.